Yesterday the pope took a moment to tell us not to underestimate the devil.

Francis described Christian life as a continuous battle against Satan during his homily at morning Mass at the Vatican on Thursday (Oct. 30).

Oh yeah? That’s what it is? All the more reason to be glad I’m not a Christian then.

“This generation, and many others, have been led to believe that the devil is a myth, a figure, an idea, the idea of evil,” the pope told the faithful during Mass at the St. Martha guesthouse where he lives inside the walls of the Vatican.

Yes, Mr Bergoglio, that’s because it is. It’s a supernatural or magical immortal being with superpowers, dreamed up by human beings, like countless other fictional characters throughout history, some more interesting than others.

Let me guess what he’s going to say next. “But nu-uh – the devil is real.” Game over.

“But the devil exists and we must fight against him.”

Right – the pope says the devil exists, so that’s a clincher.

Basing his reflections on the Apostle Paul’s admonition that Christians must “put on the full armor of God” in order to resist Satan’s temptations, Francis likened life to a “military endeavor” and urged people against being carried away by passions and temptations.

“No spiritual life, no Christian life is possible without resisting temptations, without putting on God’s armor which gives us strength and protects us. … The truth is God’s armor.”

See what he’s doing there? He’s enacting the very thing he just said was wrong – the idea that the devil is an idea of evil as opposed to a real (though spooky) person.

This isn’t a new hobby for the pope. He was doing it in 2010 while being a cardinal and talking smack about same-sex marriage and Teh HomoSecks.

A Jesuit cardinal has become the latest Church leader to speak out forcefully against a government’s push towards same-sex marriage, and has called on his nation’s contemplatives to pray fervently to prevent such laws.

According to an article in tomorrow’s L’Osservatore Romano, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires and Primate of Argentina, has said that if a proposed bill giving same-sex couples the opportunity to marry and adopt children should be approved, it will “seriously damage the family.”

He wrote a letter to all the monasteries telling the monks to pray pray pray against it.

He wrote: “In the coming weeks, the Argentine people will face a situation whose outcome can seriously harm the family…At stake is the identity and survival of the family: father, mother and children. At stake are the lives of many children who will be discriminated against in advance, and deprived of their human development given by a father and a mother and willed by God. At stake is the total rejection of God’s law engraved in our hearts.”

Cardinal Bergoglio continued: “Let us not be naive: this is not simply a political struggle, but it is an attempt to destroy God’s plan. It is not just a bill (a mere instrument) but a ‘move’ of the father of lies who seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.”

So he’s saying the devil is behind the idea that same-sex marriage and adoption should be legal. The devil. He might as well announce that LGBTQ people are all witches and that Christians should hunt them down. That’s the supposedly more “progressive” new pope.